


Best Laid Plans

by ErinNovelist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: First Kiss, Getting Together, Humor, I promise, M/M, purely klance shit, some injury, there is no lotor/lance, they're all little shits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-05 20:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10316627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinNovelist/pseuds/ErinNovelist
Summary: “If by dream, you mean your worst nightmare, then yes, sweet Paladin.” Lotor’s voice was soft and saccharine as he crept closer Lance, lips pulling into a twisted, cruel smile. “I am the vengeance my father seeks, the fear you feel in the nights, I am—”“Batman,” Lance whispered."Lance," Keith whispered. "Please don't antagonizeZarkon'sson."Or: Lance and Keith get captured. Lotor is a Diva. There's kissing, and somehow they escape too, but who's really here for that?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an exercise to better understand Lance and Keith's character. This is not how it ended.

When Lance tried to open his eyes, pain drummed against his skull in tune with his pulse, the aching _thump-thump-thump_ drowning out everything else, as soft purple light danced across his line of sight, blurry and eerie. He couldn’t help but let a dry whine of fear fall from his cracked lips. It came out as a grating croak in the back of his throat, lungs stuttering to push the air and sound out, and all he wanted to do was just _breathe_. 

Lips twisted into a grimace, Lance propped himself up on trembling elbows in hopes of opening his airways, but nausea and dizziness struck him the moment he moved, so with a shaky groan, he sank back down onto the floor. Hands scraped along the ground to find some sort of anchor in the slippery world of pain and color that he’d been thrown into, but cool metal cuffs binding his wrists together stopped him from exploring further. 

He was in pain, he was handcuffed, and he didn’t know where he was. 

Lance cocked his head as the world faded into view, becoming more aware as the seconds ticked on, gaze settling on soot-streaked palms and blood-stained fingers. He traced the cracks in the floor, covered in dark puddles of warm liquid, to his hip where his armor was cracked, sticky with blood. An icy wave of fear crashed over him, and he dug his teeth into his bottom lip to stop the shaky sob of fear that threatened to tear out his throat.

He remembered now.

He’d been on a scouting mission to a newly-liberated planet, Xixy-7819, which hadn’t existed prior to Allura and Coran’s millennia-long sleep in the cryopods. No one had known what to expect from the newly-formed planet, barely two thousand years old, but the team desperately needed to resupply, so he’d been sent to check out the ground, see what resources or people might inhabit it. Things had been going well until he and Keith were ambushed by Galran sentries, wave after wave crashing over them, and even though they’d fought their way through the pack, the path to Red and Blue was blocked, and then the guards were upon them, and Keith had—

 _Keith_.

Lance’s eyes snapped open in alarm. That’s right, he realized, Keith had been on the scouting mission with him. 

“Keith,” he croaked, drawing on the strength to lift himself off the ground. A throbbing pain rocketed down his back, but he pushed back it to sit up, collapsing against a wall when he’d reached the apex of his ascent. “ _Keith_.”

“Hey, hey, calm down,” a voice spoke out from the shadows of the room. It was a Galran prison cell—he’d recognized it from the many slave ships they’d hijacked in the search for Pidge’s family and Shiro’s old crew. “You’re okay.”

“Keith,” Lance bit out as the world finally come into view.

The ominous purple lights from above cast an ominous glow over Keith’s face, his skin looking pale and sickly, but a smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “Get enough beauty sleep?” he asked with a low chuckle. 

Lance snorted, shaking his head, conscious of the tingling sensation tickling the back of his neck. “Oh, I’ve had better, believe me. I’ll give the floor 3/10, though would not recommend.” Anything beat the couch in the rec room in the Castle of Lions—despite what the others claimed, the ancient Alteans knew nothing of comfort. “So, what happened? Where are we?”

“You don’t remember?” A sliver of panic wormed its way across Keith’s face, eyes flashing wildly and lips pressing into a thin line.

“I remember some Galra, an evil commander, us getting our asses kicked, and then it’s all kind of black.” Lance shrugged, though a sharp hiss fell through gritted teeth. _Definitely dislocated_ , he noted.

“Well you got your ass kicked,” Keith chimed in. “I wasn’t gonna let them take you, so I figured I’d come along.”

“Your face says otherwise,” Lance said.

Keith glared, but his features ended up getting squished together the more he tried—Lance couldn’t tell if it was on purpose, but from the looks of the splotches of black and purple dusted across his cheeks, the other paladin probably had a broken nose. He also looked mighty constipated, but that wasn’t something Lance had been trained to deal with in an intergalactic war.

“Y-You… finally look like the Black Paladin,” he said, and then he couldn’t stop it. 

Hysterical giggles bubbled in his chest, jarring his ribs, and shaking his whole body all the way into his cool, damp bones. “You’re p-purple too. I see your Galra blood!” Keith flashed him a bewildered look as he laughed, bending forward to ease the pain. 

“I think I have a concussion,” Lance rasped out amidst the giggling fit. “Yeah… I most _definitely_ do.”

Keith opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, the door to their cell opened with a loud _clang,_ the metal bouncing against the wall, as a Galra adjourned in purple-and-black armor swept into the room. Long white hair spilled out from beneath gray helmet he wore, the sides flared out like bat wings and a round knob at the tip that reminded Lance of the brass decorations on the front of his underwear drawer back home. A black cape with blood-red fringe fell over his shoulders, swishing behind him as he walked, and Lanced wondered if he wished hard enough that the cape would tangle in the Galran’s legs and he’d trip before he reached them.

 _A failed model walk always burns a villain’s ego_ , he noted.

He turned to say something to Keith, a joke on the tip of his tongue, but all he saw was his fellow paladin’s eyes narrowed in a glare of chaos and rage. As scared as Lance was right now, and he was positively quaking in his boots, he was mildly concerned that Keith thought he’d developed pyrokinesis in the last ten minutes. 

“Greetings, Paladins,” the Galran drawled out with a bright smile, gripping the edge of his cape as he whipped it behind him in a grand gesture. “My name is Prince Lotor of the Galran Empire, and you killed my father. Prepare to die.” 

 _“Oh my god_ ,” Lance said in glee. “I can’t _fucking_ believe it. Keith, my dream’s come true. I’ve fallen into the Princess Bride.” Keith flashed him a worried look. Lance didn’t blame him—it might just have been the concussion talking, but he was honestly concerned for himself too right now. 

“If by dream, you mean _your worst nightmare,_ then yes, sweet Paladin.” Lotor’s voice was soft and saccharine as he crept closer Lance, lips pulling into a twisted, cruel smile. “I am the vengeance my father seeks, the fear you feel in the nights, I am—” 

“ _Batman_ ,” Lance whispered. 

There was a sharp _smack_ as Lotor’s palm collided with the side of his face, head bouncing off the hard wall behind him. Starbursts and nebulas spun in a celestial dance behind his closed eyelids, and Lance could only let out a soft moan as the world tried desperately to right itself. A long, droning wail roared in his ears, temples pounding hard to block out the sound, for the first time in a long while, Lance wanted nothing more than to take back his words.

“—hey, _hey!_ —” Keith’s voice broke out through his painful reverie. “—wanna hit someone? _Huh?!_ You hit me, you got that? _You hit me_! You don’t get to hit _my crew_!—don’t get too!” It was high, shrill, and scared.

Scared was never a word he’d associated with Keith before, and it wasn’t something he wanted to hear from him _ever._

Lotor turned to face Keith, and Lance felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want Keith to get hurt too, he couldn’t bear it if—

“Hey, you purple cat!” Lance called out, drawing the Galran prince’s attention back to him.

“Lance!” Keith kicked the ground with his feet, the noise startling both Lotor and Lance. “What on God’s green Earth would make you antagonize _Zarkon’s_ son?”

“Oh what would you know about God’s green Earth? You live in a desert, Keith!” Lance snapped back, anger brewing hot and heavy in his chest.

Lotor’s eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, puzzlement nibbling at the edges of his features. “Aren’t you supposed to be fighting me or—”

Keith growled in his direction. “No, _no_ , you don’t get to talk!” He whipped his head back to Lance, eyes flashing wildly, and he leaned forward, straining against his bounds to reach his fallen teammate. “And _you_ , you need to shut up for once in your _god forsaken_ life!” 

“Hey! I’m trying to save your life, _you asshole_!”

“And I’m trying to save yours!” Keith was shouting now. He turned towards Lotor, shouting whatever profanities he could think of, a mix of Altean, English, and (Lance thought) Pig Latin slicing through the air like darts for a bullseye. 

Keith looked worried. Dark hair hung in his eyes, wet with emotion, other strands plastered across his forehead with sweat. The bruises across his nose caused him to grimace with each word he choked out as he swallowed down the pain, doing everything he could to keep Lotor’s attention off Lance in order to protect the Blue Paladin. The muscles in his neck bulged out as he yelled and yelled, voice changing from a smooth baritone to a splotchy crack, until Lance didn’t think Keith could scream anymore. Fingers trembling in the cuffs, nails digging into his palms, and hands curling into white-knuckled fists… Lance was struck silent and stupid. 

 _Oh god_ , he realized. _Keith is really scared. Keith really cares, and he’s scared._

“Keith,” Lance said softly.

“No!” Keith whirled around to face him. “You need to shut up, or so help me—”

“Hey, you don’t get to tell me what to do.” Lance glowered, expression turning stony. “You may be the acting Black Paladin until Shiro finishes recovering, but that does _not_ mean you get to be the boss of you.” 

“Oh don’t be stupid, Lance.” Keith shuffled closer, cracked knee pads scraping against the hard ground. “The more you talk, the madder he’s gonna get—”

Lance pursed his lips into a twisted smile as he turned to Lotor. “—oh, don’t listen to him, beautiful, you love the sound of my voice—”

The comment seemed to enrage Keith more. “—You love the sound of your own voice, don’t you, you stupid, stupid—?”

“Excuse me,” Lance interjected. “I’d like to ask the audience to help answer that question. Prince Lotor, my fabulous he, of Galra, do you like my voice? It’s nice, has a nice tone?”

“Well, I guess,” Lotor began, but Keith interrupted him, finally having crawled over to join the two in the corner of the cell.

“You think this is funny?” Keith growled, angry streaks of red dusting the tops of his cheeks, making the bruising from his broken noise even worse. “Why do I even like you, you fucking asshole?” 

“Hey, now, get back to your corner—” Lotor said, but it was too late.

Distracted by the prisoners’ arguments, he hadn’t prepared for Keith’s sudden attack. Jumping to his feet, arms looping around Lotor’s neck, Keith twisted his body and drove the Galra’s head into the wall beside them, a sharp _crack!_ echoing through the cell as the unconscious prince slumped in Keith’s white-knuckled grip. There was silence as Lotor dropped, his torso clipping Lance’s injured shoulder, and he barely smothered a pained groan as the joint began to burn.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, so sorry,” Keith whispered under his breath, maneuvering Lance out from under the prince’s heavy form. “I didn’t think this through.”

“At least you got him,” Lance rasped, voice caught in his throat. “Glad to see our diversion tactics still work.”

He pushed himself on shaky feet and wobbly knees, the world spinning wildly around him, and he clutched at Keith’s elbow for support. Limping slowly over Lotor’s crumpled body of purple and black, and right through the open door thanks to a certain Galran prince, they headed down the purple-lit hallway where their Lions would no doubt be waiting in the Galra’s Ultra-Secret Hanger That No One Knew Anything About™, which was equipped on every Galran airship, and _if only, if only_ Team Voltron knew about it.

Keith’s heavy breathing tickled his neck, hot air sending shudders down his spine, and Lance was made quite aware of his presence as they walked in silence. “So,” he said with a sharp smirk. “I hear you like me?" 

Keith’s head snapped up. “What do you mean?” 

“Well, you said it yourself,” he said. “ _’Why do I even like—_ ‘”

The rest of his question was lost in the smash of Keith’s lips against him as they swallowed down the words. Lance’s heart pounded against his broken ribs, pain thrumming through his body as easily as the blood in his veins, as if it were trying to break out of his chest. He stood frozen in the hallway of the Galra prison ship, a prince locked in a cell down the hall, with Keith Kogane kissing the life out of him. 

 _Well,_ Lance thought to himself. _That’s a positive check for brain damage with this concussion._

He couldn’t have cared less however as the world kept turning, and there was still time to burn before the sentries and guards were alerted to their escape. Throwing caution to the wind, Lance looped his arms around Keith’s head and pressed himself closer to him, grabbing fistfuls of hair, soft like satin between his blistered fingers, and breathed in everything Keith had to offer him with the kiss. Lips moving against one another, Lance licking into Keith’s mouth as the younger man let out a soft sigh and relaxed against Lance’s hold— 

It was _perfect._

Suddenly here was a loud shriek of metal as the wall a few yards in front of them blew out due to a large yellow lion head that shoved itself into the belly of a Galra battleship. Lance and Keith pulled apart as quickly as they’d flown together, chests heaving as they gulped in air, and stared at Hunk’s lion with wide eyes and racing pulses.

“Look,” Hunk’s voice sounded over the speaker. “I won’t tell anyone you were kissing instead of escaping if you don’t tell Shiro I almost killed you.”

“Deal,” Keith said, breathless, and _holy fuck_ , Lance had _done that to him._

“On one condition, big guy,” Lance added. “You give us a lift to our lions.” 

“Fine,” Hunk said as Yellow’s mouth lowered, revealing the ramp and their escape. “But no kissing in the lion.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Lance said and pulled Keith forward, their hands still bound. “Sounds like a plan, my man.”

(And if they snuck in a kiss in the back of the lion, no one knew. They had plans for this.)


End file.
